Input System and Method in Which Candidate Characters Submitted by a User Are Recognized and Recognized Characters Are Returned to the User

1. An input method comprising: one or more users having browsers for accessing a server based in a network, at least one of said users inputting characters by accessing said server via one of said browsers; connecting to said server via said browser; downloading an applet from said server, in which said applet has a dynamic user interface generator, an input method selecting interface module, and a network interface module; selecting proper language and input method by using said input method selecting interface module, and sending selected information to said server; sending by said server an input interface layout to said client according to selected information; generating by said dynamic user interface generator a user interface based on the input interface layout; inputting characters via said generated user interface and sending said characters to said server; recognizing by said server the received characters, and sends the recognized results to the client; and displaying the results in the input interface of the client.

2. The input method according to claim 1 , characterized in that: the step of said server sending an input interface layout to said client according to selected information further includes: an input user interface loader in the server reads one or more user interface information from an input method engine pool, according to the selected one ore more input method, and then configures the appropriate input user interface layout.

3. The input method according to claim 1 , characterized in that: the step of said server recognizing the received characters, and sending the recognized results to the client further includes: a user profile manager stores and manages information sent from different clients; an operation manager selects an input method engine from an input method engine pool to recognize the input characters; a communicator sends the recognized result to the client.

4. The input method according to claim 3 , characterized in that: further comprising the step: a balance scheduler allocates the user requests to a plurality servers.

5. The input method according to claim 4 , characterized in that: the information sent from the client is stored in the user profile which has a history area for storing previous recognized candidates, and a current input area for storing the candidates of the current recognizing characters.

6. The input method according to claim 5 , characterized in that: further comprising the step: a multi-input method combiner in the server combines the different recognized candidates of different input methods.

7. The input method according to claim 6 , characterized in that: said multi-input method combiner obtains the recognized results by intersecting the recognized candidates of different input methods.

8. The input method according to claim 6 , characterized in that: further comprising the step: a postprocessor based on language model in the server forecasts the recognizing character based on the recognized candidates.

9. An article of manufacture comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing an input method based on a network, the computer readable program code means in said article of manufacture comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect the steps of claim 1 .

10. A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for an input method based on a network, said method steps comprising the steps of claim 1 .

11. An input system based on a network, said network comprises at least one server and one or more clients the input system comprising: one or more browsers for accessing said server by the clients, the browsers configured to download an applet from the server to input characters and to display the results; and said server comprising: a communicator for sending and receiving data to/from the client; a user profile manager for storing and managing information of different clients; an input method engines pool for storing different input method engines of different languages; and an operation manager for selecting an appropriate input method engine based on the selected language and selected input method, and for sending the input characters to be recognized to the engine.

12. The input system according to claim 11 , characterized in that: said applet includes: an input method selecting interface module for selecting language and input method; a dynamic user interface generator for dynamically generating an input user interface; a data encoder for compressing the input information; a network interface module for sending and receiving data to/from the server.

13. The input system according to claim 11 , characterized in that: said data encoder has an input method based code compressor for allocating different parameters of compressing algorithm to different input methods.

14. The input system according to claim 13 , characterized in that: said server further has a balance scheduler to allocate the user requests to a plurality of servers and to balance the computing loads of the servers.

15. The input system according to claim 13 , characterized in that said communicator includes: a receiver for receiving the information sent from the client to the server; a decryptor/encryptor for decrypting and encrypting the information received or sent out; and a user identification component for reading the user id from the information deciphered.

16. The input system according to claim 11 , characterized in that: said user profile manager includes: one or more user profiles for storing the user id information, the language selection and the input method selection, and the data sent from the client, said profile is further divided into two parts: a history area for storing previous recognized candidates, a current input area for storing current recognized candidates; an input tracking daemon for extracting all the input received from the client; an output generator for taking the results from the profile.

17. The input system according to claim 16 , characterized in that: the operation managing unit further includes a combiner, for deciding whether the user selects multi-methods and for getting combinated candidates of different selected methods if the user selects multi-methods.

18. The input system according to claim 16 , characterized in that: the input method engines pool includes: a plurality of input method engines for recognizing the input characters; a multi-input combiner, for combining the candidates of different methods if the user selects multi-methods to input characters; a postprosessor based on language model, for forecasting the recognizing character based on the previous recognized candidates.

19. The input system according to claim 18 , characterized in that the input method engines include: handwriting recognition engine for recognizing the handwriting input information; speech recognition engine for recognizing the speech input information; and code-based recognition engine for recognizing the input character by matching.

20. The input system according to claim 11 , characterized in that: said operation manager includes: a language id module for getting the language the user is now using from the user profile; a method selector for getting the method the user is now using from the user profile; a operation managing unit for selecting an input method engine from the input method engine pool based on the output of the language id module and the method selector to recognize the input character; an input user interface loader for reading input user interface configuration information from the input method engines pool based on the selected method, and for configuring the input user interface layout.

21. A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing an input method based on a network, the computer readable program code means in said computer program product comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect the functions of claim 11 .

22. An input method comprising: inputting characters by accessing a server via a browser; connecting to said server via said browser; downloading an applet from said server, in which said applet has at least one of: a dynamic user interface generator, an input method selecting interface module, and a network interface module; selecting a proper language, and sending selected information to said server, said server sending an input interface layout to said client according to selected information, said dynamic user interface generator generating a user interface based on the input interface layout; inputting characters and sending said characters to said server, said server recognizing the received characters, and sending the recognized results to the user; and displaying the results for said user.

23. An article of manufacture comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied therein for causing an input method, the computer readable program code means in said article of manufacture comprising computer readable program code means for causing a computer to effect the steps of claim 22 .

24. A program storage device readable by machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for an input method, said method steps comprising the steps of claim 22 .